Michael D Higgins calls for apology for victims of violence

The president of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, has said those who inflicted violence in Northern Ireland should apologise and show more humility about the past.

He was speaking in a BBC interview ahead of his state visit to the UK, which begins on Tuesday.

It is the first such visit since the Republic of Ireland became an independent state.

The visit reciprocates the historic visit to Ireland by the Queen in 2011.

President Higgins said he was looking forward to meeting the Queen and British political figures but also Irish communities in Britain.

Asked if he believed the victims of violence deserved an apology, he replied: "Oh yes, of course I do, on all sides."

The president said that many involved in violence had sought to establish a distance between "versions of themselves and actions they deemed necessary at the time," but they could show a "great deal more" humility.

He was asked if it was possible to have a lasting and meaningful peace without addressing the past.

He said: "No, I think you have to address the past... You can't allow yourself to be crippled by the past. You have to be able to address the past in a way that doesn't cripple you, in the present, or damage you into the future."

Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness shook hands with the Queen for the first time when she visited Belfast's Lyric Theatre in June 2012

He said he could not ask the families of victims to put the past behind them.

Society could not afford to wipe out the memory of violence, he said.

"I think that there is very significant work to do," he said.

"Affecting a kind of amnesia is of no value to you. You are better to honestly deal with the facts that are standing behind you as shadows... we must be of assistance to each other in coming to understand how we get to a new place.

"There is work to be done in communities."

The president said the people of Northern Ireland had a "particular and extraordinary genius" for resolving conflict and were the best people to negotiate how to address the past.

But when they had decided on that they should be strongly supported by what he called "the community of others".

Sectarian divisions

President Higgins' visit takes place at a time when both London and Dublin describe Anglo-Irish relations as being at their best since Irish independence more than 90 years ago.